Do you ever have a problem where you just don’t know how to reply to an argument, not because you don’t know the answer, but you just don’t know where to begin? Like, the foundation of knowledge you’d need to impart to this person before you could even begin to drag them out of their sinkhole of ignorance would cost thousands of dollars if it were coming from a university?
Yes. I call these ‘onion problems’, because it’s all a question of layers - your interlocutor won’t get the simple answer because it’s predicated on their first having accepted a prior argument that they either disagree with or haven’t heard of, which in turn is predicated on their having accepted something else that requires lengthy explanation, and so on until you finally dig down to the first, core issue they need to understand or accept before you can start on anything else. But sometimes, the person can take your inability to give what they’d consider a simple, easy answer to mean that your position is inherently flawed, when instead, it’s an issue of comprehension.
If your disagreement is ultimately about something that one of you considers to be fundamentally obvious and true, but which the other person sees differently, then it naturally becomes harder and harder to explain more complex points extrapolated from that first, single disagreement without first establishing how the two are related; and if the initial point of discussion is several layers removed from the core divergence, then it can sometimes be difficult to identify.
One of the most clear-cut examples of an onion problem is when you see a hardcore creationist arguing against evolution: you can’t rebut their points by simply explaining how the science works, because their failure to understand the science is ultimately less important than why they think the science is irrelevant the first place. So until or unless you can argue them forwards to a point where they’re willing to view the relevant science as rational or logical, even if only hypothetically, there’s no point trying to explain the real definition of Mitochondrial Eve or anything else - otherwise, as far as they’re concerned, you’re just talking more nonsense.
(via knitmeapony)
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